Never underestimate the creativity of humans. Old-fashioned crosswalks were an excellent idea, but they’ve simply become so commonplace that drives have an unfortunate tendency to zone out and not notice them, which can lead to unfortunate tragedies.

In the never-ending quest to stop drivers from running people over, optical illusions are now all the rage.

A town in Iceland painted this crosswalk illusion on its sidewalk to try to frighten drivers into paying attention and hitting the brakes.

As cars approach, the paint makes it look like these road stripes are three-dimensional bars that would rip up the bottom of a vehicle.

In fact, it’s just a clever paint job.

This trickery is an idea that’s making its way around the world. Last year the same kind of thing appeared in India. Someone on Twitter points out a decidedly different approach to the same concept in Vancouver:

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